Both And.

watch as the sun’s daughter transforms into an earth woman.

sometimes i wonder if i’ll ever get married. not because i am cynical about marriage or have some tragic backstory about love, but simply because i am not sure i’d be able to build a home there. 

unlike many of the Black girls i grew up with, i lived in a household where i not only had both of my parents present in my life, but they were also happily married to each other. in fact, they’re a year and some change short of celebrating thirty years together. i’m often reminded of how i am privileged in this way and spend time reflecting on the impact it has had on my life. the older i get, the more i begin to realize that above anything else my parent’s marriage has directly affected who i have become and who i am becoming as a woman. 

growing up my dad was my everything. an old friend recently reminded me of that when he decided to feature my dad on his father’s day video and requested that i send some of our pictures. i’d be lying if i said i didn’t get emotional taking that journey down memory lane: our first daddy-daughter dance, our date to see john legend perform live under the stars, his surprise appearance at one of my college lacrosse games, and more. the love i experienced from my dad throughout early childhood and adolescence laid the foundation for my beliefs on romantic love and dating and marriage. mixed with all the misogynistic bulls**t i was fed in church about a women’s worth being directly tied to her virginity, marital status, and ability to bare children, i loved very hard growing up. i found my place in life being the wholesome woman standing behind, not beside, her man. 

from my high school sweetheart to my college boyfriends, i always showed up for them first and allowed myself to fall second. i bounced from relationship to relationship taking each new life lesson with me thinking i’d see a change, but never having the chance to see that the necessary change lied within myself. the person who helped me see that i had to first change myself was my mom.

growing up my mom and i had a more complicated relationship. we have very similar personalities and temperaments so as you can imagine we butt heads often. in fact, we butt heads so often that i am the only child out of four children that did not learn how to drive from my mom. 

all of that to say, she sees me and understands me on a level i’m not sure anyone else ever will. i’m not sure if that’s a testament to the mother-daughter bond or the ways in which we are similar women. 

i can remember the times that i looked to my mother for some combination of pity and sympathy and found some gut-wrenching wisdom. the kind of words that take your breath away and make your stomach hurt. 

during my first break-up, i remember thinking my world was coming to an end and crying into my pillow. something in me told me to go show my mom i was hurting, and i was met with what felt like cold disdain at the time, but what i now know was the divine. to this day i can remember the way my mom looked at me and said, “that boy does not love you.” 

for a while, i held on to that moment and allowed it to fuel a narrative that in order to be valued as a woman you had to be “hard.” my mom is a remarkable woman and she’s highly valued by those who have the honor of doing life with her so the story that i told myself was wise, strong, powerful, admired, well-spoken Black women aren’t soft. 

naturally, i resonated more with my masculine energy, and struggled to find the balance between the masculine energy that won over my mom’s approval and the feminine energy that swooned for my dad’s approval. relationships were often the ways i sought out the balance between the two energies. i could still play lacrosse and make great grades, but by having a relationship that aligned with america’s patriarchal society i was portrayed as feminine. white evangelical christianity also played a huge role in this as well (but i’ll save that for another time.)

between sixteen, the age i was first “allowed” to date, and twenty-four, i’ve had four “serious” relationships. when my last relationship ended, i remember talking through some feelings i was having with my mom and she looked at me and said, “you have to get over the fear of being alone. what are you so afraid of?” since that day a little more than two years ago, i have been on the most amazing journey towards self-love and self-acceptance. i quickly realized the journey would not be all face masks and candles. my journey looked like alcohol, and weed, and meaningless sex with some questionable characters, and some self-denial, and a few tattoos, and a couple piercings, and a little bit of credit card debt, but it also looked like cleansing tears, and deep breaths, and a lot of grace. 

what i’ve learned is that wise, strong, powerful, admired, well-spoken Black women are both and. they are both masculine and feminine. their beauty lies in their outward expression of the two energies and their inward appreciation for the two energies. 

sometimes i wonder if i’ll ever get married. not because i am cynical about marriage or have some tragic backstory about love, but simply because i am not sure i’d be able to find a home big enough to accommodate how i balance the feminine and the masculine, or accommodate the ways in which i tend to my needs, or accommodate the space i create to pour into myself prior to pouring into others or accommodate the land i’ve reserved to allow myself room to grow and heal continually.